The mobile device is becoming increasingly ubiquitous as a communication tool. In addition to its use as a cell phone, the mobile device is often used for other forms of communication including email, text messaging and the like. Text message services and protocols (e.g., Short Message Service (SMS)) are primarily designed to handle simple short messages of text. Depending on the protocol(s) used, text messages are limited to a single text message size of either 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters.
A markup language is a set of annotations (or markups) to text that describes how the text is to be structured, laid out, parsed or formatted. It is common in many markup languages to have the text of a document intermingled with markup instructions in the same data stream or file. These embedded or “inline” markups can be processed by various applications, services and/or programs designed with such capability.
However, applications, services and/or programs without such capability are often forced to present the intended text along with the inline markups via a user interface. Such presentation can it make it difficult, confusing and/or aesthetically unpleasant for a user to view. For example, electronic business cards are typically marked up according to a particular file format (e.g., vCard). Conventional text messaging services are not capable of recognizing the markups associated with an electronic business card. As such, attempts to send an electronic business card as a text message will result in a receiving user being presented with a garbled mixture of contact information and inline markups.